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Spark Networks CTO Ben Hoskins Talks Cloud Migration

Spark Networks CTO Ben Hoskins has spoken to Amazon Web Services about how cloud technology helped him to integrate a diverse group of applications during the Affinitas-Spark merger in 2017.

He explained that the legacy data centre Spark was using to power its dating services repeatedly experienced outages as the business grew.

The company relaunched SilverSingles on the cloud in December 2017 as something of a test case, and found that it was able to cut its international rollout time by “300%”.

The reason for this, according to the CTO, is that prior to using the cloud Spark would have needed separate hardware setups for each territory it wanted to enter.

Soon, SilverSingles was accounting for around 15% of the downloads across the entire Spark portfolio. This paved the way for further integration of cloud technology.

“We didn’t have to order new hardware, or predict the capacity we would need in a year from launch, or negotiate more space in a data center, which you need to do if you’re running your own hardware,” said Hoskins. “We were relieved not to have to deal with nonsense like that.”

The team recently achieved a full month of zero customer-facing downtime, after which the CTO bought everyone t-shirts in celebration.  

Cloud services have also helped to reduce load times, he explains, and developers seem more comfortable working with the modern infrastructure.

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Scott Harvey

Scott is the Editor of Global Dating Insights. Raised in Dorset, he holds a BA from The University of Nottingham and an MSc from Lund University School of Economics and Management. Previously he has written about politics, economics and technology for various online publications.

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